La huelga, el carnaval y los comicios: el mundo del trabajo portuario en Buenos Aires y la configuración de una comunidad obrera, verano de 1904

Abstract

This paper inquires about the process of emergence of a working-class community in the port of Buenos Aires, resulting from actions by workers and inhabitants of the working-class neighborhood at the beginning of the 20th century. Originality: At the crossroads of diverse historiographies (social, cultural and political history), this paper proposes a joint regard at the labor dimension, worker disputes, carnival celebrations and electoral participation, and to use this multiplicity of events and experiences to think about the emergence of a radicalized worker community, with a particular identity gestated in the mobilization during a specific time at the beginning of the 20th century. Methodology: The months from late 1903 to early 1904 were an important juncture in the port district, and based on a diverse set of documents (commercial, neighborhood, trade and left-wing newspapers, news magazines, police reports, photographs, among others), this paper reconstructs the worker experience in three settings converging in the summer months: protest, carnival and legislative polls. At the same time, it ponders the territorial dimension of community configuration and the key places that formed the backdrop to a story of protest, celebration, and elections. Conclusions: This analysis shows us that worker sociabilities around the port consolidated a community based on family, corporate, partisan, neighborhood and worker solidarities, in times of labor, political and festive mobilization, and of radicalized confrontation with the State and with corporations.

Keywords

• Buenos Aires
• experience
• working class community
• world of dock work